Book Chamber geometries The art and life of Louise Bourgeois - Thames & Hudson

Louise Bourgeois was a prolific artist known for her deeply personal body of work, which includes sculptures, installations, drawings, and prints exploring themes of memory, trauma, fear, and hidden emotions. Bourgeois first gained international recognition in the 1990s, when the artist was in her eighties, for her ambitious series Cells: small, room-like sculptures containing arrangements of symbolic objects designed to evoke emotional and psychological reactions in viewers. Here, for the first time, her extensive oeuvre is intertwined with a fascinating discussion of the full range of ideas, emotions, and experiences that inspired her work.

Renowned critic and curator Robert Storr, considered a leading interpreter of Bourgeois, presents a chronological account of the artist's career, weaving thematic and sequential discussions of her portfolio of work. After an introduction outlining her career, the chapters focus on her childhood; Bourgeois's education, early career, and emigration to the USA; her “disappearance” in the middle of her career and gradual return to prominence in the 1980s; and her later career as a celebrated star artist exhibiting worldwide until her death in 2011. The final chapter examines Bourgeois’s profound and ongoing artistic legacy.

The Thames & Hudson publishing house was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their greatest passion and mission was to create a “wall-less museum” and to make the world of art and research accessible to a broad public. To reflect international perspectives, the company’s name combined the rivers flowing through London and New York, represented in its logo by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, the other west, suggesting a connection between the Old World and the New.

Today, still an independent, family-run company, Thames & Hudson is one of the world’s leading publishers of illustrated books, with over 2000 titles in print. It publishes high-quality books across all areas of visual creativity: fine arts, applied arts, decorative arts, performing arts, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and music, as well as archaeology, history, and popular culture. The list of children’s books is also expanding. Headquartered in London with a sister company in New York and branches in Melbourne, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Paris, another subsidiary, Interart, distributes English-language books in France.

History of Thames & Hudson

Walter Neurath was born in Vienna in 1903. In 1938, he left his hometown—where he ran an art gallery and published illustrated books—for London. Initially, he worked as a production director at Adprint, a company founded by Viennese émigré Wolfgang Foges. Neurath and Foges developed a pioneering concept now known as book packaging (or co-publishing), where ideas for books are developed, commissioned, produced, and sold to publishers operating in different markets and languages, enabling large print runs and reducing unit production costs. Neurath’s concept was the first of many innovations introduced to the publishing world through Thames & Hudson.

Seeking to continue the packaging of {collector’s|collector’s} books in the second edition and recognizing the need to amortize the high costs of producing illustrated books, Neurath founded his own publishing company, with offices in London and New York, in the fall of 1949. Eva Neurath, who arrived in London from Berlin in 1939, was a co-founder.

Of the ten titles published on the first list by Thames & Hudson in 1950, *English Cathedrals*, with photographs by Martin Hürlimann, were the first and most successful. The company's strong conviction from the very beginning regarding the longevity of books was reflected in their continued print until 1971. In the first year of publication, Albert Einstein’s *Out of My Later Years* also appeared, indicating the broad scope of the program. As the list gradually expanded—from ten titles in 1950 to 144 in 1955—the company moved its offices to High Holborn and in 1956 relocated to a Georgian townhouse at 30 Bloomsbury Street, near Bedford Square, becoming the epicenter of book publishing in London. The manufacturing remained at this address, eventually expanding to five buildings by 1999, when it returned to High Holborn. In 1958, Thames & Hudson launched one of its most renowned series, *World of Art*, which became the foundation of a highly diverse list. Characterized by pocket-sized editions with black spines, the series expanded in just seven years to include 49 titles. Nearly 60 years later, the series boasts over 300 titles, which, according to Christopher Frayling, are “splattered with paint copies” in every art school across the country. Other significant series that added depth and prestige to the list include *Ancient People and Places*, edited by Glyn Daniel, which contributed to pioneering interest in archaeology from the 1950s onwards, both in book form and television. Over 34 titles have been published in this series over 34 years. The large-format *Great Civilizations* series, launched in 1961, featured contributions from esteemed scholars such as Alan Bullock, Asa Briggs, Hugh Trevor-Roper, A. J. P. Taylor, and John Julius Norwich. After building one of the most important publishing houses in Europe in less than two decades, Walter Neurath died in 1967 at the age of 63. Sculptor Henry Moore remarked that “his death was a loss to our cultural life.” Sir Herbert Read noted that Neurath “more than anyone else was responsible for the revolution in art publishing” and was “one of those rare entrepreneurs who successfully combine business acumen with idealism.” Eva Neurath became chairwoman. Walter’s son, Thomas, who joined the company in 1961 along with his sister Constance, became managing director; Constance later served as artistic director for several decades. Both Thomas and Constance remain on the Thames & Hudson board, as do Thomas’s daughters, Johanna and Susanna. From producing the first commercial edition of *The Book of Kells* to the triumphant publication of the six-volume *Vincent van Gogh – Letters*, from technical innovations like “French folds” to the controversial documentation of graffiti art in *Subway Art*, Thames & Hudson has always been at the forefront—culturally and technically. The year 2016 marked an extraordinary new chapter for the company, announcing publishing partnerships with two of the world’s leading museums: the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The world of art and scholarship remains at the heart of Thames & Hudson’s publishing program, which remains true to its core principle: providing a “museum without walls.” Today, Thames & Hudson is a recognizable international brand, a symbol of British publishing. Its extensive catalog includes thousands of engaging titles, many of which are exclusive collector’s editions. Manufacturer information